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It's been a while since I reviewed a recent travel book. This one stood out among the books I read last month.

The Riverbones by Andrew Westoll

Andrew Westoll spent a year as a primatologist chasing monkeys through the jungles of the Central Suriname Nature Reserve. He returned five years later as a writer obsessed with finding the secret soul of this poorly understood country. 

Few outsiders have heard of Suriname, and even fewer can place it on a map. It's a surreal place -- a former Dutch colony, rich in resources but badly governed, home to indigenous peoples and Maroons (the descendants of escaped slaves brought from Africa), and quite possibly the world's last Eden. Ninety percent of it is covered in jungle, but the image that remains at the end of the book is that of the riverbones: a forest of lifeless trees poking skeletal fingers from the reservoir of the Afobaka Dam, and the 43 drowned villages at the bottom of all that murk, flooded to power an aluminum smelter that no longer exists. It's a moving example of how human rights and ecological preservation compete with the simple desire to build a better life.

This insightful book brims over with obscure bits of history, stories of shamans, Brazilian gold miners, political murders and shady characters of every tropical stripe. Westoll also paints a vivid picture of the disconnection endured by the traveler who truly drops off the map: that feeling of being trapped in a culture he can't understand, and simultaneously lost to the life he left behind to go there. To travel like this is to be alone among strangers.

I read a fascinating book last week called Pan American Clippers: The Golden Age of Flying Boats by James Trautman. It's about a forgotten age of air travel, when men were men, adventure was waiting around every corner, and the world was a much larger place.

It was the decade before World War 2, the early days of aviation. Air travel was still a luxury within reach of a select few. Crowds turned up to watch the big planes land and take off. And routes over both oceans were only just being pioneered.

All of this would change and commercial aviation would take an amazing leap after the war years, but for one brief decade the skies were a truly romantic and adventurous place to be.

Nothing symbolizes this era like the giant flying boats. Passengers were used to traveling by ship -- they liked to get up and walk around, to dine at tables in a special salon, to sleep in fold-down bunks, and to have a stand up cocktail at a proper bar -- and these enormous flying boats were designed with that in mind. Every customer was a first class customer. No one was herded about like a sheep.

Flying boats filled a niche at a time when airstrips were uncommon, and the vast empty stretches of the Atlantic and Pacific could not be crossed in a single bound. Flying from San Francisco's Treasure Island to Manila on the China Clipper was a 5 day journey, with refueling stops in Honolulu, Midway Island, Wake Island, and Guam. From Manila passengers could take connecting flights to Macao and Shanghai. Luxury hotels were built in each of these remote outposts, treating overnighting Clipper passengers to a level of service they were accustomed to back home.

The war years changed all that, of course. Runways had been built all over the place, and larger planes capable of much greater ranges -- including trans-Atlantic flights -- had been developed. Speed took precedence over comfort; the destination trumped the importance of the journey. The world no longer needed these giant flying boats, and they quietly drifted off into the haze of memory and black and white films.

But at their height, the Clippers seemed to be everywhere, appearing on posters and in luxury ads for everything from cigarettes to Goodyear rubber, and touted as "the most romantic planes ever built." You could be forgiven for thinking the skies were full of them. In actual fact, only 28 had ever been built (the best remembered being three Martin 130's and the twelve Boeing 314's that are the most widely depicted face of the Clipper). Despite their cultural importance, not a single Clipper was saved for an aviation museum. Nothing remains of this golden age, save for a few precious memories on newsreels and fading photographs. It's a romantic era of our past that we'll never get back.

My own obsession with flying boats began in 1982. I was 10 years old, and a short-lived television show called Tales of the Gold Monkey had just hit the airwaves. The story was set in 1938, in a South Pacific rife with intrigue between colonial powers gearing up for war. Each episode focused on a little twin engined Grumman Goose flying boat based on the fictional backwater island of Bora Gora. There was an ex-Flying Tigers pilot called Jake Cutter, a drunken mechanic, and a one-eyed dog, backed by supporting characters that included an American spy posing as a lounge singer, a French territorial administrator and bar owner with a checkered past, and a German spy posing as a missionary priest, who spent most of his time "blessing" the island girls. Jake's nemesis was often a Japanese princess and her fierce samurai henchman. It was fun, the characters were stock and one-dimensional, and it brought to mind old-time serials and cliffhangers. It also made me realize, at 10 years old, just how cool it'd be to get a Goose of my own and fly around the South Pacific having adventures.

The series was released last month on DVD after 15 years of lobbying by a core group of obsessive fans. I'm 5 episodes in and, yes, it's as cool as I remember.

By some strange coincidence a company called Antilles Seaplanes has also resurrected the Grumman Goose. They've taken the original design of that amphibian workhorse, installed new turboprop engines, composite materials, and advanced avionics, and are about to start selling this plane again. A new era of flying boats is pretty unlikely. But it does resurrect my old goal...

I think flying around the South Pacific having adventures is a rather worthwhile dream, don't you?

A lone mud-spattered researcher in torn khaki pants and sweat-stained sleeveless t-shirt kneels in the dirt in front of a makeshift shelter, carefully injecting formalin into a toad to halt the onset of decay. Tiny sweat bees cloud around her head, crawling into her nose and ears and getting into the corners of her eyes. She's so concentrated on her work that she barely notices them. Suddenly, a man from the nearby Pygmy village bursts into camp.

"Madame, there is a snake in the village!"

She leaps to her feet, pausing only to stuff a snake bag into the waistband of her pants and grab a snake hook, and they run off through the forest in pursuit.

For herpetologist Kate Jackson that's a good day of fieldwork in the Republic of Congo. This and many more dramatic stories are recounted in her book, Mean and Lowly Things. When asked why she decided to write such a deeply personal account of the challenges and tribulations of fieldwork in remote settings, she answers with typical aplomb, "Mostly to raise money for my next expedition."

Dig deeper and you soon discover that Jackson, an assistant professor at Whitman College, passionately believes in the epigram from Aristotle that opens her book: "To understand the world, we must understand mean and lowly things." Every page of her story breathes the excitement of discovery, and she returns again and again to the message that there is indeed great value in studying toads and snakes. "Only about two percent of all the money that is contributed to wildlife organizations goes to amphibians and reptiles," she says. "People need to understand why they're important." 

Jackson has been fascinated by 'mean and lowly things' for as long as she can remember. "As a child, I originally thought I would be a vet or a zookeeper," she says, until, on a high-school career day, she was shown the collections of the herpetology department of the Royal Ontario Museum. "I'd never seen anything like it," she says, her voice still coloured with wonder. "A new world opened up before me." The experience, and subsequent undergraduate work at the Smithsonian Institution, revealed to her the importance of collecting and identifying specimens. When the bigger picture comes together, she explains, the interrelationship of all living things and the niche each species occupies in the planetary ecosystem can be understood. It is then that individual species can be protected and balance maintained. 

For someone always interested in exploration, a longing to study the real thing in the wild was inevitable. In 1997, Jackson organized her own expedition to a remote field camp deep in the forests of Congo. The skills needed on such a venture weren't taught in graduate school, they had to be discovered for oneself through trial and error. And when dealing with venomous snakes, errors can be costly. 

Her initial foray was marred by civil war and a medical evacuation, but she came away with "an altogether irrational longing to return," which she did two more times, once in 2005 and again the following year. The 2005 expedition was another rocky one, plagued by seemingly insurmountable cultural barriers. "There was no go-between person. Just me and a group of very poor, uneducated villagers who had no understanding of my culture or where I came from," she says. "I never managed to break down that barrier." Still, it was a success work-wise. She collected approximately 130 specimens of rare snakes, lizards and frogs, including at least one species that may have been previously unknown to science.

Her 2006 expedition to the same region was a very different journey. "I think I managed to breach the cultural gap this time thanks in large part to the presence of Ange and Lise," she says, speaking of the two Congolese graduate students who accompanied her. "They were scientists who understood my world, and therefore they could interpret me to the villagers. They also knew how to negotiate with the village chiefs for the supplies and the assistants we needed." Together, they collected a large number of specimens and laid a framework of good relations that Jackson says will be helpful on future trips. 

For Jackson, the lure that keeps drawing her back to Africa is that "no one has ever done any herpetology in the north [of Congo]. It's basically undiscovered territory." Her voice drops a notch and trembles with excitement. "Central Africa is sort of a black hole for herpetology," she says. "There are tons of places to go where no herpetologist has ever been and where, within a couple hundred kilometres, you find no overlap in species. It is that diverse." For the explorer, there is no more intriguing reward.

And like most explorers, Jackson's work can mean enduring physical hardship. In her Congo camp, she slept beneath a patched orange tarpaulin on a simple groundsheet, covered in a mosquito net: a situation that caused her Bantu guide to quit because the living conditions were too harsh. The food prepared by her cook was nearly inedible. In her book she describes bland manioc that tasted like "a cross between a chunk of wood and an overcooked potato," and soup that "often includes rotting fish, which they serve cold for breakfast if I don't finish it at dinner." The smoked fish had been prepared weeks before, and it was often infested with maggots. 

Her stories of insect infestations are particularly gruesome. She describes occasions when swarms of biting ants filled her clothing and covered everything in sight, and termites that ate large holes in the tarp of her meager shelter. In what is perhaps her most disgusting story, she, Lise and Ange developed large painful bumps all over their bodies, which turned out to be maggots. Flies had laid eggs in clothing that had been hung out to dry, which later hatched into tiny maggots that burrowed into their skin. "Every time the maggot moves, it feels as if a large ant is biting you, but when you turn to swat it there's nothing there, except a lump getting gradually larger and larger," Jackson writes. Treatment involved smothering the maggots with a strip of surgical tape, and then squeezing them out by force. "I keep meaning to save one," she writes. "I long to have one with wings for my collection, but it's really hard not to pick at them."

For Jackson, it was just another day in the field. "The physical discomforts never bothered me so much," she says. "I will tolerate discomfort to do important work." What could be remotely appealing about conducting work of any kind under such trying conditions? "My state of mind is different when I'm out there. I'm not worried about getting a paper done and submitted on time, or catching the next bus, or getting a reply to an email. I forget all that. I love the sheer excitement of the field, all the things there is to discover."  

Jackson dismisses the significant dangers of her occupation just as characteristically. "Everyone thinks of my fieldwork as being dangerous because of the snakes," she writes. "But I've said time and time again that mundane dangers--malaria, murder, crashes of small planes--are much more likely." Such a thing derailed her 1997 trip when a tiny scratch on her leg came into contact with swamp water while out collecting. Five days later, her temperature shot to 104 F, and nothing in her first aid kit could halt the upward progression of creeping redness and swelling. Her trip came to an end with "a medical evacuation, by small plane from a lumber company seven hours downstream by pirogue [dugout canoe]," followed by 10 days in a hospital in Cameroon.

Snakebites might not worry Jackson, but in her book she recounts a frighteningly close call with a forest cobra on her 2006 expedition. She was left her wondering if she was about to die an unpleasant death among strangers, hundreds of miles from any possible help. "People have a hard time believing that I wasn't afraid at that moment," Jackson says. "Actually, I was profoundly glad it had happened to me and not to one of the graduate students I was responsible for." 

On the topic of fear in general, she say: "I often feel fear in advance of these expeditions. While the details are being sorted out, I sometimes sit back and wonder if this will be my last one, if I could be killed on this trip. But once you're there and you're in the details of it you don't feel fear. You've been trained for this, and so you're focused on the moment and on taking action. Fear only comes before or after." She returns to the cobra experience. "Few people know that that [cobra] was almost the last snake I caught in the wild. Not just on that trip, but in my entire life. I caught one more [a venomous Night Viper] in Brazzaville just before I flew home." She pauses, reliving the moment. "I was really glad I did it. I wouldn't have wanted to come back to Canada not having done that--wondering if I still could."  

That experience would be enough to make most people rethink their career, but after sinking into a thoughtful quiet moment while retelling the tale of the cobra, Jackson shifts back to high gear. "You know about the chytrid fungus, don't you? It's a strange fungal disease that's affecting amphibians all over the world. It's already wiped out frogs and toads in Australia and South America. Well, for whatever reason, this fungus has never been tested for in Africa. Can you believe that? It may very well have originated there." She thumps her desk for emphasis, and it carries down the phone line as a dull thud. "I've already got people catching specimens and swabbing for samples, and when we go back to the forest in June..." She's off and running again, nearly breathless with excitement, any notion of danger and discomfort completely gone, eclipsed by the wonders of discovery and the thrill of the chase.

For more information, visit Kate Jackson's website, and pick up a copy of Mean and Lowly Things (Harvard University Press). 

[This profile piece was originally published in the Going Hard column of Outpost Magazine, March/April 2008]

Born in 1915 to great wealth in Seattle, Moritz Thomsen died miserably poor in the tropics, of cholera, in 1991. He served as a bombardier in WWII, farmed in California, and at age 44 gave it all up to join the recently-formed Peace Corps. His book about that experience, Living Poor, is ranked as one of the best Peace Corps memoirs ever written. When his service was over, he chose to remain. He started a farm with an Ecuadorian friend, but that too ended in defeat. By then Thomsen was 63, and his health was already in decline.

The Saddest Pleasure takes Thomsen from the tattered remains of his failed farm in Ecuador on a journey to Colombia and then Brazil, where he travels up the Amazon River. As he moves through scenes of desperate poverty, the author also journeys back through his own life and failures, reflecting on his struggles and emotional pain with brutal honesty. He spares the reader nothing--his most scathing observations on the places he journeys through, unapologetic assessments of his life, and beautifully rendered portraits of the land and people he has come to love. It's all in there: life stripped down to its essence, just as Thomsen lived it.

Like any great travel classic, the ground he covers is large: history, culture, human nature, autobiography, growing old, friendship, family, dreams and their dissolution. But what elevates his story to a classic of the genre is the beauty with which he tells it.

You're alone in the middle of Algeria. Your entire library of irreplaceable and out of print topographical maps has been confiscated by the military, and they suspect you of being a spy. It's all just a bizarre misunderstanding of course, but they're talking about deporting you. If they do, you'll probably never get another visa to the country. This may be your one and only chance to undertake your trip, the outcome of an entire year's planning. What do you do?

Tom Sheppard set off alone on a 700 mile journey through uninhabited desert, entirely off track, without maps, without a guide, and with only the fuel and provisions he had carefully loaded into his Mercedes G-Wagen. The only information he had to rely on were detailed notes from prior overland trips, vague memories of satellite photos he had studied, and GPS waypoints from the trips in his logs--they could point the way, but they said little to nothing about the terrain he would encounter on the new route he hoped to pioneer.

Sheppard's wonderfully written account describes the extreme hazards of his journey with a modest tongue-in-cheek humour that belies the dangers he faced. His passion for Saharan landscapes and his admiration for the people of Algeria are evident in every line of his thoughtful, well-observed prose. The photos alone--233 jaw-dropping full-colour images--are enough to recommend this volume to any traveler's library.

In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century

In 1999, as the 20th century came to a close, beloved Dutch journalist Geert Mak crisscrossed Europe to retrace the history of its last hundred years and to take the pulse of the great European experiment on the cusp of a new century. Along the way he spoke to the survivors of some of the most significant events of our times, allowing them to tell their stories in their own form and fashion, bringing history to life with gut wrenching vividness and personal immediacy.

It's easy to forget just how pivotal the twentieth century was. We went from horse drawn wagons to automobiles and passenger jets. We fought in the muddy trenches of WWI, reduced entire cities to rubble from the air in WWII, and witnessed the genocidal implosion of the countries of the former Yugoslavia. Half a continent experienced the sudden rise and abrupt fall of communism as a social system and as an organizing principle for their way of life. But the turbulent century also brought with it great triumphs, including the end of war in Europe and the great social and political experiment that has become the European Union. It is on that cautiously hopeful note that the book and the century ends.

In Europe is a masterpiece of history, travel and sociology that reads like an epic novel. It will remind you of your past, provide some explanation for the present, and attempt to predict the future.

In 1955, just out of university, the Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski made his first disoriented forays into the world outside the Iron Curtain. He had only dreamed of the simple act of "crossing the border". Instead, he found himself sent to India, then China, and then Africa as a foreign correspondent. Untrained for the job and unsure of himself, he takes along a copy of Herodotus's Histories, a gift from his first boss. As that multilayered work gradually opens to yield its secrets, the methods and means of Herodotus teach Kapuscinski his trade, and the world gradually opens to him as well.

Kapuscinski does us a great service by reminding us of what a joy it is to read Herodotus. But in writing about the author of The Histories, Kapuscinski is actually writing about himself. "I was quite consciously trying to learn the art of reportage," he writes, "and Herodotus struck me as a valuable teacher." For Kapuscinski, Herodotus was "the first globalist" and "the first to argue that each culture requires acceptance and understanding", and he always strove to embrace those qualities himself. In the end, the greatest lesson he drew from the book and from his own work was that "the cultures of others are a mirror in which we can examine ourselves."

Kapuscinski died in 2007, and this poignant book, which returns to the first travels of his youth, brings his work full circle. We celebrate that life as we turn the pages, but we also mourn the fact that we have lost one of our most gifted writers of travel literature.

In addition to reviewing classic works of travel literature, I'd also like to draw your attention to works of outstanding artistic merit. The sort of thing that's likely to appeal to those who enjoy my prose. The music of The Church has formed the soundtrack for every journey I've ever taken. Allow me to introduce you to their latest album: Untitled #23.

Untitled #23, the new album from Australian rock legends The Church, may just be their most successful yet. After having risen to global acclaim in the 80's with the hit single "Under the Milky Way", The Church and popular music soon parted company. They chose the road less traveled--the road of constant evolution, daring experimentation, and uncompromising artistic integrity. Judging by the reviews of Untitled #23 (including a top-shelf 5 stars in Rolling Stone), those paths may have converged once again.

I've had a difficult time writing about this album because each listen reveals another layer, a few new notes, a new interpretation. In truth, it's what The Church has always done best. They defy easy categorization because the best of their music is timeless, existing in a universe of its own.

I can't help but interpret this new album as a continuum. I see so many threads coming together here, threads that The Church have explored over the past decade on several albums and side projects. They've all converged--quite magically--in Untitled #23, with supreme artistry and consummate musicianship.

There's the rawness that The Church began to explore on Forget Yourself (or really, as early as the Refo:mation side project)--the distortions, dischords, harsh sounds and rough edges. There's the highly polished production and the wistfulness of After Everything, Now This. There's the pop savvy and infectious energy of Uninvited, Like the Clouds. And Steve Kilbey's lyrics echo the mystical insights, classical references and surreal impressions of his early career (Remindlessness, Heyday, etc), but with the world-weary melancholy and personalism of more recent projects (Isidore and Beside Yourself both come to mind). On top of all this, each band member's mastery of their respective instruments is absolute, and Kilbey's voice has never sounded better. All of these elements have melded alchemically into what may just be the perfect Church album.

The structure of Untitled #23 reminds me of their most commercially successful album, Starfish. It's got that same balance of the pensive and the vibrant, those vast layered soundscapes that cause you to float somewhere out of yourself, paired with the ability to hit intense heights of emotional build which no one nails quite like these guys (the sort of intense driving build that makes 'Block' from Uninvited, Like The Clouds such an amazing opening track). But perhaps the most impressive thing about this new work is how The Church can gather together from the four corners of the globe and lay it all down in just a week or so of magical jams. When four such talented individuals come together, you'd expect the end product to be filled with signature riffs, individual "show-off" touches of virtuosity. That isn't the case with Untitled #23. Each individual effort is tuned to the creation of one unified, seamless vision. These are artists at the height of their powers, exhibiting absolute mastery of their craft.

For lack of a better means of approach, I'd like to give my immediate first impressions of each track of this album. Quick, simple sketches from the hip...

'Cobalt Blue' - Strange chords--I would almost describe it as 'dis-chordant'--shimmer in with an offset beat that immediately makes me sit up and take notice. The chorus sets the tone of where we're about to be taken: "And its nothing/nothing you could know..." In this song and the next one Kilbey lays down a soundtrack of places I feel I've been: "Desert wind in a telephone box" and "Camp by a lake in the blackened lands". It's a personal landscape I could almost imagine was written for me. Kilbey's magic is such that, like prophecy, any Church connoisseur must feel this way.

'Deadman's Hand' - An 'Aura' for today. Like that earlier track from the 1991 album Priest=Aura (which Kilbey has described as a vast, sprawling opium dream), it's a dark tale of conflict ("On our way to crush the revolution...") through terrain which could just as easily be a bleak desert land or the ravaged inner landscape of our own emotions.

'Pangaea' - The sort of thing The Church does best. This track floats, taking you off someplace beyond the veil until you forget yourself entirely, existing as pure music. Time, relationships, material success and lost worlds blend together and interpenetrate each other until you're no longer entirely sure where you stand. And who but Steve Kilbey would write a rock song about a long lost supercontinent? The thing is, Kilbey knows Pangaea's echoes are still with us today. We're walking on them...

'Happenstance' - Kilbey's cracked velvet voice at it's coolest. Pure poetry as he spins images, not in narrative form, but as a series of impressions that come together to create the feeling he's conjuring. Mysterious lyrics followed by an understated line--much like his signature plays on words (which flip reality inside out and cause you to see it from an unexpected angle), it's what he does best.

'Space Saviour' - A ridiculously cool opening riff--upbeat and naïve-- that slows suddenly as the vocals come in. The vocals are so heart wrenchingly earnest, and they build and build, but in the end he doesn't release you--just like the love he's singing about. This is the new SK, the naïve romantic who finally cast aside his cynical shoegazer cool and came into the open on songs like 'Musidora' (from Isidore) and 'Jazz' (from Beside Yourself). This one's on heavy rotation at my place.

'On Angel Street' - Perfect prose poetry. It immediately reminded me of Kilbey's coolest spoken word stuff--'Fall in Love' from Narcosis +, 'Saltwater' from Isidore, or 'Another Day' (a one-off collaboration). Subtle touches of music--a few notes here, the raw peal of an anguished guitar--paint the landscape as Kilbey, in a few well chosen verses, captures the dissolution of a relationship. I don't know how to express it except to say that it goes beyond words; the sum total of the music and the lyrics manifest as a colour. His tale ends on such a perfect image: "You should change the message on your machine/So sad, so strange baby, to hear my name" and then "And the line it just goes dead/And the trail it just goes cold/I guess that story's told, anyway." The deft musical touches as the song drifts off--a note here, a distortion there, some backwards guitars--are absolutely perfect.

'Sunken Sun' - Among my favourite sort of Church song. A fractured lens of several myths: Orpheus, Pluto, Eurydice (except this time Orpheus chooses love, casting aside his return ticket to remain in the underworld). And again, who but Kilbey would write a rock song that opens "I dreamed I saw the minotaur"? I love the spell this beautiful song weaves. "Eternity loomed in my garret room"--it's this sort of writing which pegs Steve Kilbey as the greatest lyricist of this age. He builds such poetry and then immediately changes the tone with a clever, light double meaning ("I had a girl in the underworld/She was a spirited little thing") which he sings with absolute sincerity. It's never what you anticipate or expect.

'Anchorage' - One of my top Church songs ever. A perfect example of the sort of build only they are capable of. The verses drive you like a rocket, and each chorus incorporates another instrument or sound, taking you higher and higher, driving towards the ecstatic. Kilbey's delivery is more and more urgent. The repeated images of ice spiral on like a mantra. None of his delivery or rhythms are predictable (the use of broken rhythm is high level martial arts--he's a master of his craft). It's the combination of those small artistic touches that no one else thinks to apply which puts The Church on an entirely different league of creative genius. This is The Church and Steve Kilbey at their absolute best.

'Lunar' - A fine little dream of a song. It's compact grace--like a deftly executed miniature painting--reminded me of 'Night Flower' from Parallel Universe. A feeling or a mood, captured in a song.

'Operetta' - A lovely, soaring closing track. A bit of the dreamy nursery tale quality of 'It's No Reason' from Séance, paired with the understated intentions of 'Song to Go' from Uninvited, Like the Clouds. But this time the album doesn't resolve. It leaves you on such a high note that you're helpless to do anything but hit 'repeat'.

This may just be the best Church album in a decade, and a 'second coming' for an underappreciated band that absolutely deserves one.

I normally stick to recommending classics of travel literature, but I'm going to break my own habit because I enjoyed this book so much.

This slim first novel from renowned poet Forrest Gander punches well above its weight in ounces. It's the perfect size for the side pocket of your backpack, and great travel reading because, like poetry, you'll find yourself returning to it again and again.

Set in the rural American South and fully in tune with its rhythms and nuances, the deep sense of place evoked by Gander's prose is second only to the deep sense of character it explores. As a Friend is the story of Les, a land surveyor and gifted writer, a person who profoundly affects everyone he touches. His closest workmate Clay envies him - he unconsciously mimics Les's gestures and phrases, tries desperately to be noticed by him, and in the end comes to both love and despise him because Les represents everything Clay can never be. Les's girlfriend Sara was so deeply entangled with him people forgot where she ended and he began. And Les himself? He sought only to "be consequent" to those around him; to be the ideal friend. But Les was living a double life which in the end unraveled around him.

The story is told in three distinct voices: the words of Clay, Sara, and a final few pages taken from a recorded transcript of Les. It's an emotionally-charged exploration of friendship, envy, attraction and loyalty, which Gander's exquisite and powerful language will leave you helpless to put down until the final page has been turned.

Grab a copy from the good people at New Directions today.

Ten years after its original release--and at least eight years since second-hand copies began fetching astronomical prices on eBay--the bible of overlanding is available once more. It's no longer an underground secret of expedition professionals, because independent travel should be accessible to anyone.

Whether you're planning a weekend excursion close to home or a major crossing of unexplored territory, the demands of both types of trip are similar; only the scale is different. This absolutely comprehensive manual deals with every phase of the journey: Equipment and Clothing Selection, Storage, Communications, Vehicle Selection and Modification, Navigation and Maintenance, and more.  Did you ever wonder what type of upholstery fares best on a desert trip, or how clean different fuels are by region of the world? That's covered too, in exhaustive detail. The section on Driving and Recovery techniques alone is worth the asking price. For those with bigger dreams, there's even a chapter on Team Selection and Training.

This isn't a manual of theory. The author, Tom Sheppard, is an ex Royal Air Force test pilot with 40 years of overlanding experience in some of the world's most unforgiving places, including six solo Sahara expeditions since 2001. He also led the first coast to coast crossing of the Sahara from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, which gained him an award from the Royal Geographical Society. Sheppard's gift for writing about complex topics with simplicity and clarity has made this book the most sought-after source of overland advice by those in the know.

The book is published by Desert Winds in the UK. Those in North America can grab a copy from Overland Video. Highly recommended.